In dueling speeches not far from the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, former President Donald Trump repeated the election claims that sparked the Jan. 6 riot while his former vice president, Mike Pence, implored the Republican Party to stop looking backward. Potential foes for the 2024 GOP nomination, neither man was ready to announce a campaign, but their speeches underscored divisions in the party between Trump loyalists and Republicans who may still like Trump’s ideas but are more than ready to move on. The former president was clearly not ready to move on. “It was a catastrophe that election. A disgrace to our country,” Trump said, insisting despite all evidence that he had won in 2020. And he continued to tease his plans for the future, telling his cheering crowd, “We may just have to do it again.” Federal and state election officials from both parties and Trump’s own attorney general have said there is no credible evidence the 2020 election was tainted. The former president’s allegations of fraud were also roundly rejected by courts, including by judges appointed by Trump. Pence, in an opposite approach from Trump, said, “Some people may choose to focus on the past, but elections are about the future.” Addressing the Young America’s Foundation, a student conservative group, Pence said. “I believe conservatives must focus on the future to win back America. We can’t afford to take our eyes off the road in front of us because what’s at stake is the very survival of our way of life.” Trump, too, said America’s survival was at stake. In a speech billed as focused on public safety, he said the country was in imminent danger from crime. Among his proposals, he called for executing drug dealers, sending the homeless to tent cities on the outskirts of towns and expanding his Southwest border wall to keep out the thousands of violent criminals he said resumed pouring in after Joe Biden moved into the White House. Trump addressed a summit organized by a group of former White House officials and Cabinet members who have been crafting an agenda for a possible second Trump administration. But he spent plenty of time airing his usual grievances. “If I renounced my beliefs, if I agreed to stay silent, if I stayed home and just took it easy, the persecution of Donald Trump would stop immediately,” he said. “But that’s not what I will do.” It was his first trip back to Washington since Jan. 20, 2021, when Biden was sworn into office despite Trump’s frantic efforts to remain in power. He spoke as some of his potential 2024 rivals have become increasingly brazen in their willingness to challenge him. They include former Pence, who outlined his own “Freedom Agenda ” in a speech nearby. The former White House partners were making dueling appearances again after campaigning for rival candidates in Arizona on Friday. Their separate speeches come amid news that Pence’s former chief of staff, Marc Short, testified before a federal grand jury investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol. Short was at the Capitol that day as Pence fled an angry mob of rioters who called for his hanging after Trump wrongly insisted Pence had the power to overturn the election results. Pence has repeatedly defended his actions […]

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